3 ms·

"While I like the mindset that says you should be open with your creations, I respect the one that says your ideas are your own" I think one of the strengths o

by decode 18y ago

"While I like the mindset that says you should be open with your creations, I respect the one that says your ideas are your own" I think one of the strengths of the American IP system is that, while you can call your ideas your own if you want to, you don't have the right to control their reproduction or distribution. To quote the 1976 Copyright Act: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." The only way you are allowed control over the distribution of an idea is through a patent, which is only granted under certain circumstances and for a fairly limited time. This concept that ideas are not subject to individual ownership, but rather common ownership, has myriad benefits, among them the right to critique ideas and a bias toward spreading good ideas as much as possible. Of course, in the particular case of characters and story in a book it's harder to say what is idea and what is expression of that idea. To quote wikipedia, "Courts disagree on how much of the story and characters of a copyrighted novel or film should be considered copyrightable expression." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Idea.2Fexpression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Ide...

unalone 18y ago
So that means Rowling has no control over her fantasy universe, even when it's just reflecting what she wrote? I think that people should have some rights in terms of expanding on what she wrote, for instance. But that encyclopedia was just reiterating what had been written in the seven novels. It wasn't adding anything new. (As for character control: Rowling spent years building her universe before writing a single word. I think it would be pretty awful if she didn't get some sort of recompense for the people who use those years of planning and make a quick buck off of it. But I'll admit that I don't know whether or not copyright law protects something as conceptual as a character design.)
- decode 18y ago
  "So that means Rowling has no control over her fantasy universe, even when it's just reflecting what she wrote?" That is right, and it's by design, as long as you're talking about the concepts and ideas of her universe and not their specific expressions. But again, as I said, it's not clear where the line between idea and expression lies with particular parts of a work of fiction. The free exchange of ideas is essential to the working of a free society. I can't imagine that much good would come of making the distribution of all ideas subject to the will of the people that came up with them.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I guess it depends what you mean by "concepts and ideas", then. For me, the encyclopedia would cross a line, because it's talking about the plot and the characters using excerpts directly from the series, but "The Bible According To Harry Potter" is an original creative piece that Rowling shouldn't have veto power over.
  - fatdog789 18y ago
    That's wrong. Fictional facts are considered expressions, not ideas (See the James Bond and Seinfield cases). JK can control any fictional facts from her work, like Hogwarts, or the characters. She can't control the underlying ideas, such as a wizard school, or an orphan boy hero.
    - decode 18y ago
      "Fictional facts are considered expressions, not ideas" My understanding is that fictional facts must stand the tests of originality and specificity. Neither unoriginal ideas, nor vague characters/settings have copyright protection. I believe that exactly when a character or setting becomes original and specific enough for protection has been interpreted in different ways by different courts.
- donaq 18y ago
  Perhaps, but the people who created that encyclopedia did not have access to her universe-building notes. They read her novel and then put in their own work collating all the information within and compiling their encyclopedia. I don't know how extensive that encyclopedia was, but if it's at all comprehensive, probably a fair amount of work went into it. Hence, "quick buck" might be an unfair characterization of that work. And since they did not have access to Rowling's notes, why should they have to pay her anything for the work they put in? As a matter of fact, I'm sure they've already paid her some dues in the form of buying her novels. Let's take an analogy and assume JQuery does not have documentation. I download a copy of JQuery and write an API documentation for it. Should JQuery have the right to stop me from selling that documentation?
fatdog789 18y ago
cough Actually, distribution and COPY (i.e., reproduction) rights are at the heart of copyright law. She has every right to control distribution of her works. Do not confuse the copyrightability of ideas with the copyrightability of an expression. BTW, every court that has seen this sort of case has ruled that a fictional fact or character is considered an expression, not an idea. IDEA = boy goes to a school for child wizards EXPRESSION = harry potter (a specific example of the idea)
- tsally 18y ago
  In writing (and I imagine in programming as well) every "expression" has been mimiced by some other author somewhere. Asimov has done extensive writing on this issue, and as he makes clear, it's not nearly as black and white as you are implying.
  - unalone 18y ago
    But an "expression" as a unit is meaningless. The value comes from putting it all together as a whole, which is several orders of magnitude harder than figuring out each instance separately.
- decode 18y ago
  "Do not confuse the copyrightability of ideas with the copyrightability of an expression." I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing that, but I don't think you read my comment very carefully or followed the link I posted, so I'm going to assume you just misunderstood me. "every court that has seen this sort of case has ruled that a fictional fact or character is considered an expression, not an idea" I interpret Warner Bros. Pictures v. Columbia Broadcasting Sys., 216 F.2d 945 (9th Cir. 1954) to have gone the other way. Do you disagree?

by decode 18y ago

unalone 18y ago

So that means Rowling has no control over her fantasy universe, even when it's just reflecting what she wrote? I think that people should have some rights in terms of expanding on what she wrote, for instance. But that encyclopedia was just reiterating what had been written in the seven novels. It wasn't adding anything new. (As for character control: Rowling spent years building her universe before writing a single word. I think it would be pretty awful if she didn't get some sort of recompense for the people who use those years of planning and make a quick buck off of it. But I'll admit that I don't know whether or not copyright law protects something as conceptual as a character design.)

decode 18y ago
"So that means Rowling has no control over her fantasy universe, even when it's just reflecting what she wrote?" That is right, and it's by design, as long as you're talking about the concepts and ideas of her universe and not their specific expressions. But again, as I said, it's not clear where the line between idea and expression lies with particular parts of a work of fiction. The free exchange of ideas is essential to the working of a free society. I can't imagine that much good would come of making the distribution of all ideas subject to the will of the people that came up with them.
- unalone 18y ago
  I guess it depends what you mean by "concepts and ideas", then. For me, the encyclopedia would cross a line, because it's talking about the plot and the characters using excerpts directly from the series, but "The Bible According To Harry Potter" is an original creative piece that Rowling shouldn't have veto power over.
- fatdog789 18y ago
  That's wrong. Fictional facts are considered expressions, not ideas (See the James Bond and Seinfield cases). JK can control any fictional facts from her work, like Hogwarts, or the characters. She can't control the underlying ideas, such as a wizard school, or an orphan boy hero.
  - decode 18y ago
    "Fictional facts are considered expressions, not ideas" My understanding is that fictional facts must stand the tests of originality and specificity. Neither unoriginal ideas, nor vague characters/settings have copyright protection. I believe that exactly when a character or setting becomes original and specific enough for protection has been interpreted in different ways by different courts.
donaq 18y ago
Perhaps, but the people who created that encyclopedia did not have access to her universe-building notes. They read her novel and then put in their own work collating all the information within and compiling their encyclopedia. I don't know how extensive that encyclopedia was, but if it's at all comprehensive, probably a fair amount of work went into it. Hence, "quick buck" might be an unfair characterization of that work. And since they did not have access to Rowling's notes, why should they have to pay her anything for the work they put in? As a matter of fact, I'm sure they've already paid her some dues in the form of buying her novels. Let's take an analogy and assume JQuery does not have documentation. I download a copy of JQuery and write an API documentation for it. Should JQuery have the right to stop me from selling that documentation?

fatdog789 18y ago

cough Actually, distribution and COPY (i.e., reproduction) rights are at the heart of copyright law. She has every right to control distribution of her works. Do not confuse the copyrightability of ideas with the copyrightability of an expression. BTW, every court that has seen this sort of case has ruled that a fictional fact or character is considered an expression, not an idea. IDEA = boy goes to a school for child wizards EXPRESSION = harry potter (a specific example of the idea)

tsally 18y ago
In writing (and I imagine in programming as well) every "expression" has been mimiced by some other author somewhere. Asimov has done extensive writing on this issue, and as he makes clear, it's not nearly as black and white as you are implying.
- unalone 18y ago
  But an "expression" as a unit is meaningless. The value comes from putting it all together as a whole, which is several orders of magnitude harder than figuring out each instance separately.
decode 18y ago
"Do not confuse the copyrightability of ideas with the copyrightability of an expression." I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing that, but I don't think you read my comment very carefully or followed the link I posted, so I'm going to assume you just misunderstood me. "every court that has seen this sort of case has ruled that a fictional fact or character is considered an expression, not an idea" I interpret Warner Bros. Pictures v. Columbia Broadcasting Sys., 216 F.2d 945 (9th Cir. 1954) to have gone the other way. Do you disagree?